In light of recent terrorist attacks on America's command and control system, the United States Department of Defense sponsored an initiative to fundamentally change the manner in which the command and control system operates. The initiative involves a transition from the traditional hierarchical structured command and control system that is wired in series, to a global, Web-enabled environment that may adapt efficiently to changing circumstances and allows for full information exchange across a battlespace. This newly created environment is commonly known as net-centric operations.
A primary benefit of net-centric operations or net-centricity is the increased availability of information to the entire battlespace. Net-centricity relies upon the ability to access and provide information at the appropriate time to allow informed decision making. As such, net-centric operations must be reliable and trustworthy and not be susceptible to enemy attacks. For instance, a need exists to tag data from various input/output (I/O) devices at the source such that security policies may be enforced by downstream components such as routers, guards and consumers of data.
Therefore, it would be desirable to provide a method and system for tagging data received from an I/O device at the source so that security policies may be enforced by downstream components. It would be further desirable that such system is high assurance and non-bypassable.